Basic Paragraph Formats

Quick reference

• 00:04 Let's talk about paragraph formats.
• 00:07 On the Home ribbon, about in the center is a group called Paragraph.
• 00:11 And everything in this particular group has to
• 00:15 do with the paragraph formats up until the hard return.
• 00:19 This symbol represents the hard return.
• 00:21 I'm going to click it just so
• 00:23 you can see what happens on my screen when we apply this.
• 00:26 When I activate it, look what happened,
• 00:28 I have a hard return at the end of the line Exercise.
• 00:30 Another at the end of this title, another three lines down into this paragraph.
• 00:35 So as you can see, because I turned on the codes, that button is called Show Codes.
• 00:40 Typically, I work with that button on all the time.
• 00:43 The polka dots in between the words, those are space bars.
• 00:46 And then this hard return represents the end of the paragraph, and
• 00:51 represents everything in this little group.
• 00:54 I can just click it once, it'll apply to the entire paragraph.
• 00:57 So for this lesson's focus, we're going to stay tuned to the Align Left,
• 01:01 the Center Line, the Right Line, noting the tool tips that pop up every time I
• 01:05 flip my mouse on these buttons, and then of course the Fully Justify.
• 01:09 Now if you use these a lot, you will want to memorize those buttons.
• 01:13 Me personally, I don't, I just use them once in a while.
• 01:16 All right, let's talk about the very first one, Align Left or ctrl + L.
• 01:20 So this is your standard alignment, we have a jagged right edge.
• 01:24 A jagged right edge assists the reader's eyes to go from line to line.
• 01:29 It's okay to do that, you see it all the time in storybooks, large manuscripts.
• 01:34 At this point, everything by default is aligned left.
• 01:38 It would be typical to hit my Tab key,
• 01:41 I'm going to press my Tab on my keyboard to push that over half an inch.
• 01:45 Let's move on to the next one, Align Center, now notice,
• 01:49 I'm not even selecting the entire paragraph.
• 01:51 I can just come up, float my mouse on the center button and click.
• 01:55 And it is center aligned.
• 01:57 Now this is typically used to center a title of a report or a story.
• 02:01 So I'll click into the next line, noting the hard return, even though there is
• 02:05 one line of text, doesn't matter, the computer sees it as a paragraph.
• 02:10 So I'll go ahead and hit that center again.
• 02:13 The next one, Align Right.
• 02:15 When we align a paragraph right, it's because we want to go flush right,
• 02:20 and then our left side would be jagged.
• 02:23 So I'll click into that paragraph, flip my mouse to the top, click on the right line.
• 02:28 And there we have it.
• 02:29 Typically, I'll use that for notes.
• 02:31 Maybe I'll use that for page numbers.
• 02:34 So I'll click into this note and write a line, as well.
• 02:37 And then we have the Fully Justified at the bottom.
• 02:40 A fully justified paragraph will align flush left, flush right,
• 02:44 and it will work out the spacing between the words,
• 02:46 there'll be slight adjustments in there, you won't even notice it.
• 02:50 So I'll come up to the top, click on the Fully Justified and there we are.
• 02:55 This is generally used in business letters,
• 02:58 magazine articles will have flush right edges.
• 03:01 All right, do you have to have those codes showing in order to apply these?
• 03:06 Absolutely not, that is a personal preference.
• 03:09 I prefer them on when I'm working in Word, but it does look busy, it does look messy.
• 03:14 So I'm going to turn those off, click and there they are off.
• 03:17 All right, go ahead and practice those on the exercise file.

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